In article ,
says...
I'm not sure this information hasn't been posted previously, but for those
of you that are yet unaware, NOAA is experimenting with making it's charts
available to the public at no charge electronically..

Consider taking a look and making comments to NOAA accordingly..

...................................

Greetings Dr. Marino

Thanks for your comments on NOAA's On-Line Chart Viewer. We really
appreciate all the feedback.

You might want to try another new product we're working on called the
BookletCharts. After a period of open public comment, we'll decide
whether to make them a full-scale NOAA product, in which case we'll do
the entire suite. No date has been set. During the comment period, we're
only keeping the BookletCharts up-to-date sporadically. The URL is
www.NauticalCharts.gov/bookletcharts.

Also, about 6 months ago we began distributing the Raster Navigational
Charts and weekly electronic updates for free over the Internet. These
are the raster charts we developed collaboratively with Maptech. They
are in the popular .BSB format that is used by many electronic
navigation software packages. The download trail begins at
http://nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/mcd/Raster/Index.htm.

Try the on-line chart viewer at:
www.NauticalCharts.gov/viewer


Now if we could only convince the Canadian Hydrographic Service that
charts developed with public funds should be freely downloadable
by the public. Alas, they and their agents (NDI) still want about
$5US per chart in electronic form---with a 30-chart minimum.

Mark Borgerson